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. 2022 Nov;196(1):87-95.
doi: 10.1007/s10549-022-06694-1. Epub 2022 Aug 26.

Highly specialized Breast Centers did not experience delay of care during COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: the Senonetwork experience

Agnese Losurdo #  1   2 , Andrea Vittorio Emanuele Lisa #  3 , Mariano Tomatis  4 , Antonio Ponti  4 , Stefania Montemezzi  5 , Elisabetta Bonzano  6 , Lucio Fortunato  7 ; Senonetwork Working Group
Collaborators, Affiliations

Highly specialized Breast Centers did not experience delay of care during COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: the Senonetwork experience

Agnese Losurdo et al. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Aim of the study: The study aims to evaluate the performance of selected, high-volume, highly specialized, Italian Breast Centers at the time of COVID-19 pandemic (year 2020), compared to pre-pandemic time (year 2019), highlighting differences in terms of clinical presentation of breast cancer (BC) and therapeutic strategies.

Methods: Patients' data were provided by the Senonetwork data warehouse Senonet. In order to examine changes in the surgical and oncological management of BC patients during different phases of COVID-19 pandemic, we took advantage of a selection quality indicators (QIs). We performed the analyses in two time-frames, from July to September (Jul-Sep) (2019 versus 2020) and from October to December (Oct-Dec) (2019 versus 2020).

Results: Our analysis did not show any statistically significant difference in terms of diagnosis, surgical, oncological and radiation therapy procedures between the two trimesters 2019 and 2020. Nevertheless, we observed statistically significant differences, favoring 2020, when analyzing time-to surgery and time-to radiotherapy. On the other hand, we observed a significant reduction of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and we did not recollect any data on a major use of neoadjuvant endocrine therapy.

Conclusions: In Italian Breast Centers, partners of Senonetwork, we could not observe any treatment delay or change in standard clinical practice for BC care during the 2020 pandemic year, compared to 2019 pre-pandemic year. This finding is in contrast with the globally reported decrease in the performance of the Italian Breast Centers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has to be linked to the sharp selection of Senonetwork Breast Centers.

Keywords: Breast cancer; Breast centers; Covid-19; Delay in breast cancer treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A Radiological and/or cytological confirmed pre-surgical diagnosis. B MRI before surgery. C Time-to-surgery in ≤ 30 days from clinical indication. D Time-to-surgery in ≤ 42 days from the first test positive for invasive BC
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
A Single surgery procedure for invasive tumors. B Single surgery procedure for in situ tumors. C BCS for treatment of invasive lesions ≤ 3 cm. D BCS for treatment of non-invasive lesions ≤ 2 cm. E pN0 patients treated with sentinel lymph node biopsy
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
A Radiotherapy after BCS. B Radiotherapy after mastectomy in pN2a. C Time-to-radiotherapy ≤ 12 weeks. D Endocrine therapy in HR + cases. E Chemotherapy for high risk (T > 1 cm or N +) HR- cases. F Trastuzumab for HER2 + case
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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